It is eleven days into the New Year: A time when people look back, reflect on what matters to them, what will give them joy. For many, it’s not a time to carry a briefcase of excuses for the year just gone by. That’s why the dawn of the New Year is often a time of high hope, expectations, of thoughts of new opportunities and of a better life. This is the wish list of every sane person, not only for themselves, their families, but also for their country. However, in order to achieve these desired things, the political leadership has a critical role in shaping and realising these aspirations.
In this connection, the President is like the tower that sees it all. What he says, and the decisions he takes, can, to a great extent, define the year, for good or for evil. That’s why presidencies are defined in part by the challenges that confront them. In other words, the legacy every President leaves largely depends on the challenges of immediate sort he chooses to address and find enduring solutions to them. It’s so because an elected President is seen not only as a symbol of democracy, he’s also the spirit of leadership that could either inspire or discourage the citizens. Performance matters.
What the President does, how he arrives at the decisions he makes, all combine to form the citizens’ opinion about him. The question is: when does a leader, know that some choices he makes are dangerous risk-taking that comes with dizzying consequences? Only if President Buhari knew that the authority he exercises comes from public trust on his ability to govern, his administration would not have been this mean-spirited that has put us in this mess. The president and his governing All Progressive Congress (APC), have squandered public trust.
This is glaring in every sector in more than six years this government has been in power. Things have grown progressively worse. Anger, frustration and disillusionment have eaten deep in the citizens like acid. Rather than accept responsibility and blame, the government and its officials externalize blame, reject feedback and often hit hard at critics as “wailing wailers”. This is what Larry Ellison (former CEO of Oracle) calls “management by ridicule and rhetorical bullying “. If you have worked for opportunists in government, you will almost remember it as a tough time. The good news is that any environment that breeds opportunism seldom endures, although research has shown that opportunists sometimes survive longer than they should because of the environment they operate in.
But make no mistake about it: 2022 will be the ‘Year of Gathering Clouds’. What do I mean by that?. A lot of events are packed into this year: politics, economy and labour issues, and of course, insecurity. How the government handles these testy issues will make or break Nigeria. Remember what the Bible says, “when the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth”…(Ecclesiastes 11:3). Nigeria has come to that irreversible turning point. That’s exactly the point former CEO, National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Prof. Usman Yusuf made in the interview he granted SATURDAY SUN, December 25, 2021.”People are tired and nothing good is going to come out of this government until 2023”. Prof.Yusuf is a combative, fearless critic. He’s not afraid to walk alone even in the dark. But, he takes no prisoner. He says the mood in the country, including the North, is that of anguish and pain that you can touch. Remember, he comes from the President’s home state of Katsina. But that does not stop him from saying things as they are. He says the “degree of insensitivity of the president is so shocking that whatever he does doesn’t shock us anymore. We are just praying that we get to 2023 in peace and our people will go and choose the right person”.
Does he mean that Nigerians made a colossal mistake by electing the president twice in 2015 and 2019? The Professor of Haematology/Oncology and bone marrow transplantation puts it this way: “Buhari has been a disaster for us in the last six years”. He also alleges that “people who voted for Buhari feasted on the goodwill that he was going to do the right thing, but he squandered that goodwill…”. Was the Prof hard on the president because he relieved him of his job at NIHS? Perhaps no! He said he had been old enough to know 13 administrations in the country since 1966, and none of them came with this much goodwill and this much hope and expectations for several reasons, one of which was the perception by some Buhari diehards that he is a sort of ‘Messiah’ coming to save Nigeria. Now, the opposite is the case. President Buhari was when he told NTA in an interview last Thursday, that he has given his best for the country, and now, age is telling on him. Yes, he needs rest. His best is not enough for Nigeria. Even more true is that he cannot give more than he has, a mediocre performance.
That’s the point Prof. Yusuf was making. Like him or hate him, Prof Yusuf has spoken the minds of many Nigerians who don’t have the courage to speak up about how this country is being run by the present administration. It’s not unkind to say that honesty has been a major casualty of this administration, of this self-righteous president and key officials of his government. They try strenuously to define truth downwards. Their gift for fudging facts is like their talents for lies. They tell the truth selectively to suit a particular objective.
If you read Charles Ford, the author of: “Lies, Lies! The Psychology of Deceit”, you will understand the playbook from which some of the government appointees like Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information and Culture, is taking his briefs from. As someone said the other day, for Lai Mohammed, “lies don’t have a lifespan”. I add that it’s a sin of omission, not commission. According to Ford, for such people, it’s like the difference between lying as a legal issue and a moral one. From my research on the lies and deceits of this government, I found they come close to Saint Augustine Number 5 catergoy of lie, that is, that lie which is told to externalize blame and please a section of the public.
And quite a handful of the ministers are trying to outdo one another, to deceive the unwary public and please the President. Only recently, Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Amaechi, embarked on historiography, a bold attempt to diminish and demonize the legacy of Goodluck Jonathan presidency by dishing out half truths and outright lies. It was a failed attempt to absolve the Buhari administration of the present mess in the country. Everything the current administration inherited from its predecessor, it has squandered. It has made the economy worse than it met it.
From over $550bn economy (the largest in Africa, and 26th globally) in 2015, Nigeria is today a nation in a borrowing binge. Today, the national debt stock is close to N50trn. This is about three times what it inherited in 2015. Unemployment rate in 2015 was single digit, today; it’s more than 33 percent, with youth unemployment more than 47 percent. Insecurity has squeezed everyone to a corner, pushing away foreign direct investment in the country. Nowhere is safe any longer in Nigeria. As Prof Yusuf said in the Sun interview referred to, “a leader surrounds himself with people, they didn’t surround him”, meaning, the President should be held liable for whatever befalls the country, the good and the mess. And how long will this mess by APC continue?